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In this guide you will find instructions on playing Freeze Mage. Freeze Mage
is an extremely deep and complex deck that can be incredibly dominant when played
correctly. It has a high learning curve and is considered by many to be one
of the most difficult decks to play, but for those who are up for the challenge
it offers fantastic rewards.

This version of the deck is built extremely greedily with Malygos added
as an additional win condition. This makes it very effective against heavy Control
decks, and decks running Reno Jackson, but means the deck is not recommended
against an aggressive meta.

1. About the Author

This deck is presented to you by Sottle,
a professional Hearthstone player who plays for compLexity Gaming.
Sottle regularly streams on Twitch and explains all of his moves. Watching him is a good opportunity to see how
this and other decks play out in practice, and how decisions are made in real time.

2.1. Mana Curve

0

2

8

10

2

1

3

4

3. Strategy

Freeze Mage is a powerful deck that relies on stalling the game with AoE clears
and freeze spells, while drawing through your deck to gather the resources
needed to combo your opponent down from 30 Health.

Your early turns will be quite passive, often consisting of drawing cards
with Arcane Intellect, or playing
Mad Scientist to pull an Ice Barrier or Ice Block out of
your deck. One card to pay special attention to in these early turns is
Acolyte of Pain. You should avoid playing this card out before you can
guarantee drawing a card from it by pinging it with your Hero Power. Card draw
is extremely important in this deck and sacrificing your Acolyte for a single
draw will often leave you lacking in options in the late game.

Once your opponent starts to establish a board of their own, you must
start to make difficult decisions about how to use your removal options and
stalling tools to stretch out the game as long as possible. As a general rule,
you do not want to use your direct damage spells like Frostbolt and
Fireball to remove minions, unless the deck you are playing against is
extremely aggressive. This is even more true in this deck than most builds of
Freeze Mage, since Frostbolt is a crucial card for your Malygos
later in the game, since even under Emperor Thaurissan conditions, Fireball
is incredibly hard to play alongside Malygos.

Planning several turns ahead is key to the deck and working out how to use
your spells. Avoid using Frost Nova just to freeze the board for one turn
if you have no way to answer the board the following turn. The correct use of
Frost Nova is either to play it in combination with Doomsayer to sweep
the board if they cannot remove the Doomsayer, or to stall for a turn to
allow you to Flamestrike the board the following turn.

On the subject of Doomsayer, although the most common use of it is
to create a strong board clear in combination with a Freeze effect, there are alternative
situations to look out for. For example, against Aggro decks, playing a Doomsayer
early to deny them from playing minions for a turn can be really strong. Along the
same lines, it can be powerful to play Doomsayer even on an empty board, especially
if you plan to follow it up immediately with Emperor Thaurissan, Archmage Antonidas,
or Alexstrasza. This will prevent your opponent from playing minions
and allow you to drop your big threat onto an empty board.

Your Secrets in the deck, Ice Barrier and Ice Block, are vital.
Since the release of Curse of Naxxramas, Freeze Mage has been
able to add Mad Scientist to their decks in order to draw these Secrets
more often. Ice Barrier is a useful card to stall the game for a turn
or two, especially if played early enough, where as Ice Block is your
ultimate checkmate card. If you are behind an Ice Block you can easily plan the
minimum number of turns you have left to live and work out how to kill your
opponent in the time you have. It is important to point out that having a Mad
Scientist on the board breaks the usual rule of "draw cards first". If you have
a Mad Scientist in play and you plan for it to die that turn, you should do that
first, to prevent yourself from drawing the Secret that Mad Scientist will
play for free.

Emperor Thaurissan adds a compeletely new dimension to Freeze Mage.
Since this is one of the most combo intensive decks in the game, and you almost
always have a large hand, Emperor Thaurissan has the potential to have a massive
effect on the game. The difficulty comes from finding a turn that is free to play
Emperor Thaurissan, as Freeze Mage's turns are often very tight on Mana usage.
Once you do get this card into play however, it has a lasting effect on the game,
as you are now able to squeeze more plays into a single turn, which is often
the difference between victory and defeat. In this deck, you are looking to hit
very specific combinations of cards. Although Malygos is powerful, it
cannot be normally played in the same turn as your burn spells in order to maximise
its potential, due to this, you need to specifically aim to discount Malygos as
well as Frostbolt and Ice Lance in order to create the potential
for huge damage burst combos in a single turn. If you do not yet have at least two
of these cards in your hand, you should generally bypass playing Emperor until a later
turn and instead focus on making a play to draw cards, or address your opponent's
board.

Archmage Antonidas is included in the deck as an additional win condition
if you are unable to draw your Alexstrasza. If it seems unlikely that you
will enough turns to live to win through the Alexstrasza route, playing a turn
like Archmage Antonidas, Frostbolt, Ice Lance, or Archmage Antonidas,
Ice Block, can create an alternate route to victory for you, simply burning
your opponent out of the game with repetitive Fireballs. Due to the addition
of Emperor Thaurissan to the deck, Archmage Antonidas is now an autmoatic inclusion
in Freeze Mage as opposed to a flexible card, this is because the discounts that
Emperor provides can create even more devastating combos with Antonidas than usual.

Alexstrasza is your key card in the deck. If you manage to reach
turn 9 in a comfortable position with Alexstrasza in hand, you will often just
win the game without any possible response from your opponent. The goal for
finishing the game is Turn 9 Alexstraza to reduce your opponent to 15 life, and
then using combinations of Fireball, Frostbolt,
Ice Lance, and Bloodmage Thalnos to end the game. As always with this
deck, planning ahead is vital. Before using an entire turn on Alexstrasza,
evaluate the position of the game and whether you have the necessary resources
and time to finish your opponent. There are many factors to this such as whether
you have an Ice Block in play, whether you hold the second Ice Block in hand,
whether you have the necessary damage combos in hand, and how much your opponent
can realistically heal for. The possible permutations are near-endless here, and
it will take some practice with the deck before you are comfortable with them
all. Just always keep in mind, that planning several turns ahead is of vital
importance at all times.

If you find yourself approaching turn 9 and you do not yet hold
Alexstrasza, you should continue to stall the game for as long as
possible while drawing additional cards with your spare Mana. It is not unusual
for Freeze Mage to draw through their whole deck over the course of a game, so
remain patient if the vital card you need is one of your bottom 3-4. As always,
it is important to assess the situation of the game, and how long you have to
live. Sometimes your only way to win will be to make a sub-optimal play to
draw the one card you need to save yourself.

3.1. Synergies & Combinations

Various combinations of spells can be used together for huge damage in a
single turn. For example, the combo of Fireball, Frostbolt,
Frostbolt, Ice Lance, Ice Lance is 20 damage.

Malygos can create enormous burst damage if you have managed to discount
key cards with Emperor Thaurissan. For example, the combo of Malygos,
Frostbolt, Ice Lance, Ice Lance is 26 damage, and can be cast for
9 Mana if Emperor has discounted all of them, allowing you to fit in a further Frostbolt
for 8 additional damage, potentially even creating a 1 turn kill situation.

3.2. Mulligans & Matchup Specific Strategies

In most cases you will simply look to Mulligan for your draw cards, such as
Arcane Intellect and Mad Scientist, since
drawing cards is all you will look to do in the early turns. Usually
Acolyte of Pain should not be kept, since ideally you will not choose to
play it until turn 5. More specific matchups strategies can be viewed below.

3.2.1. Vs Hunter

A difficult matchup for this deck. The
consistent damage that Hunter can output through their Hero Power along with
their minions can often end up killing you too quickly. You should mulligan more
aggressively for Doomsayer, Mad Scientist, and Ice Barrier in this matchup. Do not
be afraid to play Doomsayer out on an early turn, at the very least this will
heal you for 7 while they kill the Doomsayer. At best it can freeze the game for
a turn if they cannot remove it. Playing an Ice Barrier early is also quite
powerful, since you are simply in a battle for survival. You can also afford to be a little more
liberal with cards like Frostbolt to remove minions against Hunter,
since your fight for survival is a lot more desperate. The key to winning this
matchup is recognising when you can use an aggressive Archmage Antonidas, or
Alexstrasza to win the race. Since Hunter has no healing, it is easy
to calculate how much damage you are able to output.

3.2.2. Vs Zoo

Contrary to what might seem immediately obvious, this is actually a strong
matchup for Freeze Mage. Your Freeze cards are vital in the matchup, as
repeatedly freezing a Zoo's board takes away all of the synergy in their deck.
Zoo functions primarily through buff cards, which enter play while adding
attack to an already established minion. Without a minion that is able to attack,
many of these cards are quite poor in isolation. The goal against Zoo is
to consistently freeze their board once it reaches an intimidating size, leading
up to a full clear with Blizzard or Flamestrike. Again you can
afford to use a Frostbolt to control the board early. Since Zoo is
forced to life tap and lower their own health anyway, you will often not need
all of your burst to finish the game.

3.2.3. Vs Control Warrior

This matchup is borderline unwinnable. Widely regarded to be the worst matchup
in the game, this an uphill struggle from turn 1. The Warrior's ability to
heal themselves above 30 health, and then have access to a pool of health, in the
form of their armor, which cannot be removed by Alexstrasza, means you simply do
not have enough damage in your deck to win the game. If you are to have any
hope of winning, you need cards such as Mad Scientist early to try and create some repetitive minion damage if
your opponent is unable to remove them. This version of Freeze Mage has an additional chance
to win, since you play a lot more total damage in your deck through Malygos. However,
despite this, your opponent is still likely to be able to out armour you, especially
if they get an early Justicar Trueheart in play.

3.2.4. Vs Priest

Mulligan and play out the game as normal. However, there is an additional
consideration that must be kept in mind for your Alexstrasza turn. Since
Priest is capable of healing, you need to take into account the worst case
scenario when planning your 2-3 turn kill plan. With access to 9 Mana of their
own, Priest can use Shadow Word: Death followed by Holy Fire to
heal back up to 20 immediately following your Alexstrasza turn, although Holy Fire is now
rare in Priest decks. Then on the turn
following your initial volley of spells, they can heal for another 2 using
their Hero Power, followed by another 2 with Holy Nova. Make sure you
take these heals into account when playing out your route to victory. Further expansions
have made this equation even more complicated, since now many Priests also
carry Light of the Naaru or Flash Heal which adds even more possible healing into the mix.
Malygos can be crucial to help you push through this additional healing
and seal the game.

3.3. Card Swaps

Loot Hoarders and Explosive Sheeps are fairly interchangeable.
If you are facing more aggression, then the Explosive Sheeps are preferred in
order to control the board early. If you are facing more Control, then the
Loot Hoarders are more beneficial to help you cycle through your deck faster.

Archmage Antonidas can be cut from the deck in favour of an additional
AoE or early game card draw. Archmage Antonidas and Malygos are in conflict
in this to an extent, since the best spells to use with both of them are
Frostbolt and Ice Lance.